The library of St Agatha's, Cambridge, houses an unrivalled and according to scholars, uninteresting collection of seventeenth century volumes. It also contains a dead student. Tragic and accidental, even if gossip hints that Philip Skellow had been engaged in stealing books rather than acquiring knowledge when he'd slipped. Only Imogen Quy, the university's nurse, has doubts - until another student is found in an ornamental fountain.

The late, great mathematician Gideon Summerfield ought to be a safe subject for a biography, so why has it been so difficult to get the book written? Imogen's lodger Fran is close to dicovering a secret about Summerfield. She is in danger, and Fran must act before it is too late.

Hoping to attract a generous endowment, St Agatha’s College, Cambridge, invites fabulously wealthy Sir Julius Farran to dine. The evening is a disaster for everyone but Imogen Quy: Farran invites her to come and work for him. She declines, but when Farran dies, suddenly and shockingly, she has to look into it. His death left a large hole in his company accounts that could mean financial ruin for St Agatha’s. To save her college, Imogen starts to cast her cool eye over the financier’s heirs, employees and enemies. What is right about the death of Sir Julius? What is wrong about it? And why did it happen? After all, her name rhymes with ''why''.

The campus of St. Agatha's College, Cambridge University, is steeped in history. One particular building, however, has a history that most would rather forget—-a tower that has drawn several students to their death. Much discouraged by the authorities, it is a college tradition for students to try their luck jumping the gap between a window and a pediment—-nicknamed Harding's Folly—-and the gap has recently claimed another victim, a glamorous and controversial Shakespearean scholar. Imogen Quy (rhymes with "why"), college nurse and amateur sleuth, is surprised that such a brilliant man would take such a foolish risk. But tragic accidents do happen—-or was it an accident? One undergraduate is so convinced of foul play that he takes it upon himself to confront the suspected murderer by mounting a production of the "bad quarto"—-a shortened, pirated script—-of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Wise, compassionate Imogen, who has been described as "sharp as needles and soft as butter," has just the right mixture of involvement and detachment to sort out what really happened in the most literate and compelling academic mystery since Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night.